It doesn't change his mind that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has warned Valley farmers to prepare for climate change by finding warmer-weather crops.

"The problem is I don't trust Uncle Sam," Fry said.

Government alienates Valley farmers mainly with its regulations. Farmers resent regulations as intrusive, ill-conceived and bad for business - which sometimes they are.

"These guys up at their offices in Sacramento or Washington, D.C., need to get out of their offices and see what is reality, not according to their spreadsheet and the book," Fry said.

Nor does it persuade him that the overwhelming majority of scientists agree the Earth is warming.

The state Department of Water Resources, for example, said spring runoff has declined 10 percent over the past 100 years; double that in recent years.

A recent University of California, Davis, study found Valley "chilling hours" - cold temperatures required by many crops (including cherries) - have declined up to 30 percent.

"Usually there's two sides to the scientific data, too," Fry said. "Just like in statistics, you can manipulate that one way or the other."

Fry has been keeping records of chilling hours back to the 1990s. His data shows no warming trend.

"This year we had a beautiful crop," Fry said.

Global warming denial would seem to set Valley agriculture up for a huge fall. Ag needs to be preparing for climate change by testing warmer-weather crops, finding new chemicals and devising new water policies.

So why deny?

Of course, reasonable people can disagree; climate skeptics may be right. But I believe they are wrong, and more, that their wrongness says something about the Valley.

"Conservatives tend to be individualists," writes Chris Mooney, author of "The Republican Brain," "meaning, essentially, that they prize a system in which government leaves you alone. ..."

In this context it's interesting to note that earlier in 2012, The Union of Concerned Scientists studied 40 Fox News segments on global warming.

The scientists found 37 of the 40 segments - 93 percent - misleading.

None of this is to discredit Valley farmers. On the contrary. They created a world-class farming region. They did so in part by being remarkably adaptive.

Ultimately, I believe, they will accept the evidence - especially when it hits their pocketbook. Probably they will innovate in a way that sets the standard for the world. Perhaps all humans stumble along with thought processes inadequate to the complexity of the world. But the specific weaknesses define different groups. In the Valley, people hate inconvenient truth.